“The next world is already on its way. College education in the U.S. faces the urgent task of getting ready for it,” Bates President Charles F. Phillips told the incoming class during Convocation 1959.

Intersections between culture and medicine drew Asha Mohamud to Tanzania.

Phillips was referring specifically to Asia, which was just beginning its ascent to today’s global influence. But Bates’ fourth president was getting at a broader notion as well: the educational importance of understanding cultures different from one’s own.

Since 1999, Phillips Student Fellowships have put that concept into action. Phillips Fellows create outstanding international or cross-cultural projects involving research, community-engaged learning or career exploration.

The program supports immersion in another culture, opportunities for intense meaningful work and unique prospects for intellectual and personal growth.

The story of her grandparents’ escape from the Holocaust drew Rachel Baumann to Europe.

The student fellowships, along with faculty fellowships and professorships, are supported by the Phillips Endowment Program, a suite of awards, honors and opportunities funded by a $9 million bequest to Bates by Phillips and his wife, Evelyn Minard Phillips.

“The fellowships take students out of their comfort zone in ways that are personally transformative, and prepare them to be citizens of the world,” says Kerry O’Brien, assistant dean of the faculty. “They really embody the mission of the college on several levels: educating the whole person, honoring diversity, cultivating intellectual discovery and civic action, and preparing future leaders.”

In 2013, seeking to understand experiences outside the U.S. that had changed the lives of people close to them, two Bates students sought and were awarded Phillips Fellowships.

Shown during a presentation last fall of her Phillips Fellowship research is Rachel Baumann ’14. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College)

When Rachel Baumann was in sixth grade, her older sister was occupied on a project for long hours at a time.

Naturally, Rachel wanted to know what her sibling Sarah was up to. It turned out to be a scrapbook about their maternal grandparents, Max Segall and Frieda Lopatka Segall. They had died when the sisters were much younger, and Rachel didn’t know much about them.

“My sister’s very artistic and I’m very curious,” Baumann says, “so I just kept asking questions and looking at the photos. And then we started talking about the Holocaust, and that’s where my interest began.”

Baumann’s interest in her grandparents gained a whole new intensity when, supported by a Phillips Fellowship from Bates, she spent summer 2013 in Germany and Poland researching the Segalls’ story of courage, audacity and survival as Jews in Nazi-controlled Europe.

And what a story it is — a chronicle of deportations, confinements, escapes and evasions whose resolution seems almost too good to be true.

Frieda and Max grew up in the same neighborhood in Berlin, and started dating in their teens. Born to a Jewish father and Gentile mother, Frieda defiantly made a formal conversion to Judaism in 1936, even as the Nazis were escalating their oppression of the Jews.

An image from Baumann’s presentation showing a document certifying her grandmother’s conversion to Judaism during the ascent of Nazi anti-Semitism. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College)

The pair were separately deported from Berlin to the Warsaw Ghetto, somehow managed to find each other there, were secretly married there — and escaped twice, the second time for good.

Late in the war, they made their way back to Berlin, where they hid out in a suburb until the end of hostilities a year later. That was Max’s idea: Counterintuitive as it seems, he rightly suspected that, two years after the Final Solution went into high gear, few Nazis would be hunting Jews in Berlin.

Last year, Baumann spent her summer tracing the Segalls’ footsteps and trying to fill gaps in their narrative. She dug into the records of the Jewish Museum Berlin, the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw and other research institutions in the two countries. She conducted more than 30 interviews. And she visited places her grandparents had been.

“I can’t experience what they went through. But 75 years later, at the same age that they were, I wanted to see where they lived,” Baumann says. “They were just human beings in love when they were my age, just living where they were living.”

Her research project had a second dimension as well. Even as she sought to understand her grandparents’ experiences under the Nazis, she researched German attitudes today toward Jews and the war. She came away impressed by German efforts to take responsibility for the Holocaust.

In a campus presentation last semester, Baumann — wearing a dress of Frieda’s — showed images from two modern projects commemorating the fate of Berlin’s Jews and other victims of the Nazis. In one district, the “Places of Remembrance” initiative comprises 80 eye-catching street signs that chronicle the escalating restrictions imposed on Jews under Nazi law.

And embedded in sidewalks throughout the city are Stolpersteine (literally, “stumbling blocks”), memorial paving stones that name victims of the Nazis, mark their last chosen places of residence and explain, with poignant brevity, what happened to them.

If we don’t examine the past in light of the present, says Baumann, “What will we have learned?”

Advised by Thomas Tracy, Phillips Professor of Religious Studies (both Baumann’s fellowship and Tracy’s chair are supported by a bequest from former Bates President Charles Phillips), she is pursuing an interdisciplinary major investigating comparative literatures of justice.

“I’m comparing literature written during the Holocaust,” she says — “poems, songs written by people in concentration camps. And I’m comparing them to memoirs written after, because I’m trying to argue that both are examples of resistance.

“The victims had everything taken away from them, except for their imaginations.”

The Segalls had always been reluctant to talk about the war. But Baumann’s parents, journalists Vivian Segall and Paul Baumann, eventually persuaded them to be interviewed. They compiled a basic timeline of the Segalls’ story.

Through her research, Baumann has added much to her family’s understanding of that story. But a central character remains elusive: Josef Glinski, the German soldier who helped the Segalls escape from Warsaw.

While discovering little else about him, Baumann tracked down his daughter-in-law in the city of Detmold, where the Segalls also lived until they came to the U.S., in 1949. But the daughter-in-law didn’t want to talk.

For Baumann, the mysterious Glinski remains tantalizing. He’s a ghost — someone known of, but not knowable. “There are so many gray areas, and the family doesn’t really know, or doesn’t want to talk about it. I feel an obligation to tell his story in relation to my family’s.”

As essential as their bravery and persistence were to the Segalls’ survival, Baumann is acutely aware that sheer luck and basic human kindness were also definitive. They wouldn’t have made it without help from others, such as Glinski. “You met the good Germans or you met the bad Germans,” Baumann says, “and my grandparents happened to meet a lot of good Germans.”

This investigation, Baumann adds, “is a lifelong process for me. When I got home, there wasn’t a sense of, ‘This is done.’ This is something that I will always be doing now.”

]]>http://www.bates.edu/news/2014/01/31/in-central-europe-phillips-fellow-baumann-14-sought-missing-pieces-of-a-family-puzzle/feed/2Senior weaves extraordinary family history with investigative look at Germany during Holocaust, and nowhttp://www.bates.edu/news/2013/11/13/senior-weaves-extraordinary-family-history-with-investigative-look-at-germany-during-holocaust-and-now/
http://www.bates.edu/news/2013/11/13/senior-weaves-extraordinary-family-history-with-investigative-look-at-germany-during-holocaust-and-now/#commentsWed, 13 Nov 2013 13:08:17 +0000http://www.bates.edu/news/?p=70130Rachel Baumann discusses her grandparents' travails during the Holocaust, and offers insights into wartime history and the roles of humanity and faith, on Nov. 15.]]>

Frieda Esther Lopatka, grandmother of Rachel Baumann.

Bates senior Rachel Baumann discusses her grandparents’ travails during the Holocaust, and offers insights into both wartime history and the importance of humanity and faith, in a talk at 4:15 p.m. Friday, Nov. 15, Room G65, Pettengill Hall, 4 Andrews Road.

Titled Why My Grandmother Converted to Judaism in Nazi Germany During 1936, the talk is sponsored by the Multifaith Chaplaincy. Admission is free and open to the public. For more information, please email hbalcomb@bates.edu.

Baumann, of Fairfield, Conn., traveled to Europe last summer on the strength of a Phillips Fellowship from Bates to retrace her Jewish grandparents’ steps through Berlin, Warsaw and the surrounding suburbs where they sought refuge as Jews during Nazi rule.

Her grandmother had converted to Judaism — perhaps for the sake of being in love, perhaps because she was simply moved by the faith — at the same time that Nazis began their persecution of the Jews.

Baumann also studied today’s Jewish community in Berlin and spent time at the Jewish Museum Berlin to get an understanding of the contemporary identity and climate for Jews in Germany.

Through studying how Berlin actively remembers the atrocities of World War Two, from large memorials to individual stones in the street, Baumann was able to piece together both her family’s missing narrative and a greater story of how a country broken by war and hatred can self-consciously rebuild a narrative of peace and remembrance.

Baumann is the same age that her grandparents were when the Nazis rose to power in Germany. Though they were able to survive their trials in Europe and emigrate to America, until this summer their young adulthood was a mystery to Baumann and her family.

Bates College’s other 2013 Phillips Fellow, Asha Mohamud ’15 of Lewiston, spent her summer in Tanzania working for an HIV/AIDS clinic and learning about community-driven public health initiatives.

The Phillips Student Fellowship is a summer research grant given to two Bates students every year, allowing them to explore another culture, conduct immersive research, and grow personally and intellectually through their unique experiences.

]]>http://www.bates.edu/news/2013/11/13/senior-weaves-extraordinary-family-history-with-investigative-look-at-germany-during-holocaust-and-now/feed/0Finder of rare Auschwitz photos to speakhttp://www.bates.edu/news/2011/11/07/oie-auschwitz-pix/
http://www.bates.edu/news/2011/11/07/oie-auschwitz-pix/#commentsMon, 07 Nov 2011 20:52:49 +0000http://www.bates.edu/news/?p=50710Ann Weiss, who discovered at Auschwitz a cache of photographs from the lives of Jewish victims before they arrived at the death camp, speaks at 7 p.m. Monday, Nov. 14, at the Edmund S. Muskie Archives.]]>

Ann Weiss, who discovered at Auschwitz a cache of photographs from the lives of Jewish victims before they arrived at the death camp, speaks at Bates College at 7 p.m. Monday, Nov. 14, at the Edmund S. Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Ave.

Confiscated from Jews deported to Auschwitz in 1943, the images reflect the memories that men and women sent to Auschwitz could not leave behind. A unique testament to the vitality of the victims’ lives, these photos are the only known surviving collection from a whole transport to a concentration camp.

At Bates, Weiss will discuss her discovery of the photographs and the journey culminating in their publication in her 2001 book “The Last Album: Eyes from the Ashes of Auschwitz-Birkenau.”

The event is open to the public and will be followed by a book signing. For more information, please contact 207-755-5980.

In contrast to the Holocaust images embedded in our minds, these extraordinary photos provide an intimate and compelling record of who the Nazis’ victims were, whom they loved and what mattered most to them.

Weiss discovered the collection of more than 2,000 photos by accident during a group tour of Auschwitz in 1986. She has traveled the globe researching the stories behind the photos. Her journey has taken more than 20 years, including many visits to Poland to secure permissions and copy the photos, and far-ranging travels to reunite photos with remaining family members. Whenever a story was matched to a face, an identity was restored.

“Survivors have always told me how their loved one died, but I would ask a new question, ‘How did they live?’ ” says Weiss. “And even when no survivor remains to tell the story, it is the photos themselves, and the eyes, that reveal their own powerful testimony.”

The photographs are the basis for touring exhibitions and a 1988 documentary film, “Eyes from the Ashes.” The images have been displayed around the world including an exhibit at the Wiesenthal Center/Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.

Weiss is a principal interviewer, researcher and analyst for The University of Pennsylvania’s “Transcending Trauma: Psychological Mechanisms of Survival” project, which has interviewed Holocaust survivors in the most detailed interview protocol to date.

She serves on the editorial board of the “Studies in the Shoah” series of history books, and has served as a trained interviewer for the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Project, founded by director Steven Spielberg.

She is the founder and director of the Eyes from the Ashes Foundation, an educational organization. Learn more.

Last winter, Judith Isaacson ’65, LL.D. ’94 got to hear her own words during a reading at the Lewiston Public Library by Katalin Vecsey, who read selections from Isaacson’s Seed of Sarah, a memoir published in 1990 that recounted her Holocaust experiences at the Auschwitz-Birkenau and Hessisch Lichtenau concentration camps.

Vecsey, who like Isaacson is originally from Hungary, also read from Isaacson’s forthcoming sequel, to be published in German in a translation from English by Gerda Neu-Sokol, lecturer in German at Bates. One story in the new memoir tells of Isaacson traveling to Hungary in 1977 to research Seed of Sarah and meeting an elderly man on a train. As they spoke, the man discovered the reason for Isaacson’s visit. Silence then fell between them. Finally he haltingly revealed a secret never before shared with anyone: He had been a worker on the trains that brought Jews to the death camps.

Katalin Vecsey, a member of the Bates College theater faculty, reads from the writings of Holocaust survivor Judith Magyar Isaacson ’65 in a free public event.

Selections from Isaacson’s book Seed of Sarah: Memoirs of a Survivor, as well as a forthcoming sequel, soon to be published by Hentrich & Hentrich, of Berlin, will be presented by Vecsey.

Callahan Hall at the Lewiston Public Library

Thursday, Feb. 12, at 7 p.m.

]]>http://www.bates.edu/news/2009/02/06/katalin-vecsey/feed/0Holocaust survivors to speak at Bateshttp://www.bates.edu/news/2001/08/07/holocaust-survivors-speak/
http://www.bates.edu/news/2001/08/07/holocaust-survivors-speak/#commentsTue, 07 Aug 2001 21:16:11 +0000http://home.bates.edu/?p=21165Teaching the Holocaust: Implications for the 21st Century, at Bates College Aug. 5-10.]]>Several Holocaust survivors will discuss their experiences at the 11th annual Holocaust Human Rights Center of Maine’s summer seminar, Teaching the Holocaust: Implications for the 21st Century, at Bates College Aug. 5-10.

The seminar will be highlighted by various evening speeches given by survivors of the Holocaust. Lou Shulman recounts his experience of Life in the Warsaw Ghetto, at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 8. Rochelle and Jerry Slivka, both survivors of the Holocaust, will speak at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 9. The speeches will be held in Room G52, located on the ground floor of Pettengill Hall.

The weeklong seminar includes lectures by special guest scholars and speakers, films and reviews of books and videos followed by discussion. In addition, the seminar will focus on methods of educating elementary school students about the Holocaust as well as examine the changing nature of Holocaust studies entering the 21st century.

]]>http://www.bates.edu/news/2001/08/07/holocaust-survivors-speak/feed/0Judith Magyar Isaacson concludes Spiritual Journeys serieshttp://www.bates.edu/news/1999/03/18/judith-magyar-isaacson/
http://www.bates.edu/news/1999/03/18/judith-magyar-isaacson/#commentsThu, 18 Mar 1999 16:56:17 +0000http://home.bates.edu/?p=31182Judith Magyar Isaacson, Holocaust survivor and author of Seed of Sarah: Memoirs of a Survivor, will discuss Return To Auschwitz: How To Forgive from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Wednesday, April 7, in Skelton Lounge, Chase Hall. The public is invited to attend the Spiritual Journeys lecture at Bates without charge. Call 207-786-8272 for more information.

Sponsored by the Office of the Chaplain at Bates, the Spiritual Journeys lecture series features speakers from a variety of traditions who tell the stories of their spiritual awakening and development. Speakers are invited to explore how they experience a sense of the holy in their everyday lives, how their perspectives and disciplines have shaped that sacred experience, and how they understand religion as a resource or an obstacle to the life of the soul. Speakers may also address what the political and social consequences of their spirituality.

]]>http://www.bates.edu/news/1999/03/18/judith-magyar-isaacson/feed/0Live documentary on Holocaust memorial dance theater to be performedhttp://www.bates.edu/news/1998/07/18/the-ivye-project/
http://www.bates.edu/news/1998/07/18/the-ivye-project/#commentsSat, 18 Jul 1998 15:40:37 +0000http://home.bates.edu/?p=22969The Ivye Project: A Live Documentary by Tamar Rogoff Aug. 3 at 8 p.m. in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall. The performance is free to the public. Tamar Rogoff will present her "live" documentary using slides, video and the 1935 diary of her father to recreate The Ivye Project, a large scale, site-specific dance theater piece at the Holocaust memorial in the woods of Belarus in the summer of 1994.]]>The Bates Dance Festival presents The Ivye Project: A Live Documentary by Tamar Rogoff Aug. 3 at 8 p.m. in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall. The performance is free to the public. Tamar Rogoff will present her “live” documentary using slides, video and the 1935 diary of her father to recreate The Ivye Project, a large scale, site-specific dance theater piece at the Holocaust memorial in the woods of Belarus in the summer of 1994.
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